wrongdude.com

Always Sometimes Daily

Earlier this year I completed a Brand development project with Ad HOC for another Central Oregon start-up – Coriant. Coriant works in the business to business market segment – a departure from my retail-centric client base. Regardless, it was a good shift and Coriant offers a great service to business of all sizes.

Working with another b2b client reminded me of my earlier days as a Creative Director for a firm back in the late 90’s – a very cool design boutique that eventually was bought by venture capitalists (they needed to diversify their portfolio) – We worked with financial institutions, law offices, and more venture capitalists – all who had plenty of cash – right before the market took a tumble, oops. It was tragic to see our once ‘cool’ studio fall apart day by day (even before the market crash). Creative took a back seat to upper management and before we knew it, the ‘culture’ they bought into and wanted to preserve so badly ended up being destroyed, over run by managers, CEOs, CFOs, COOs, etc. – it got so bad the founder of the firm was let go in the end – the end being 2002; That’s when it all fell apart – I was gone by then, but was kept in the loop by my peeps left taking grenades in the bunkers.

There’s nothing wrong w/ private equity firms – its just that in their ‘buy and build’ strategies some companies they invest in just don’t make it – so they are dissolved for salvageable equity and the process starts over. Good times, good times.

So we built the Coriant site in Joomla!, an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) – super cool! It’s a great alternative to any costly proprietary CMS because it’s free. Our weekly local even uses it.